Renee Fleming, Chita Rivera coming to Williamstown Theatre Festival

Amy Biancoll, Times Union

By Amy Biancolli

Published 3:45 pm, Friday, January 31, 2014

FILE - This Dec. 6, 2013 file photo shows Renee Fleming performing at the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony across from the White House in Washington. Fleming, a four-time Grammy winner, will perform sing the national anthem before the Denver Broncos take on the Seattle Seahawks at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. on Feb 2. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File) ORG XMIT: NYET105

Musical theater legend Chita Rivera, opera star Renee Fleming — the American soprano tapped to sing the National Anthem before the Super Bowl on Sunday — and three-time Tony-winning director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall will all take part in main stage productions in the 60th season of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the festival has announced.

Williamstown's main stage season is scheduled to open Wednesday, July 2, with "June Moon," a revival of George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner's Tin Pan Alley send-up about a young lyricist and an innocent dental worker who meet on a train from Schenectady to New York City. Directed by Jessica Stone (Williamstown's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"), it will run through Sunday, July 13.

Fleming will make her festival debut — as a renowned diva and one half of a combative, high-maintenance power couple with beauteous young ghost writers — in the second main stage production, the world-premiere "Living on Love," an adaptation of Garson Kanin's comic "Peccadillo" by Kanin and Tony-winner Joe DiPietro. It will run from Wednesday, July 16, through Saturday, July 26. Marshall, who snagged her third choreography Tony in 2011 for "Anything Goes," is scheduled to direct.

Rivera, also in her festival debut, will star in a revival of "The Visit," the satirical John Kander musical (book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Fred Ebb) about a wealthy, multiply widowed revenge-seeker who returns to her dirt-poor hometown with a vicious but tempting offer. Directed by John Doyle and choreographed by Graciela Daniele, it will run from Thursday, July 31, through Sunday, Aug. 17, 2014.

Tickets can be purchased in discount bundles through Friday, March 14, at www.wtfestival.org. Starting in April, single tickets will be available online and by mail via the festival brochure (call 413-597-3400). The box office (1000 Main St., Williamstown, Mass.) will open Tuesday, June 3.

The upcoming season is the last created by former artistic director Jenny Gersten, who left to become executive director of Friends of the High Line, a nonprofit devoted to the elevated greensward in Manhattan. She's being succeeded at Williamstown by Mandy Greenfield, artistic producer of the award-winning Manhattan Theatre Club.